Ambush
by deepfathom
Summary: Hiccup gets more than he bargained for while playing in the snow with his two young children.


Ambush

He was surrounded on all sides with nowhere left to run. So, so cold…fingers going numb…teeth chattering in the knife-like arctic breeze. There would be no escaping this time, no clever last minute idea to save his skin from this inevitable fate. This was the end of him for sure. For over an hour, he had managed to elude the relentless evil witch and her henchman, but in a final rush, they had overwhelmed him, tackled him, and finally condemned him to endless torture inside their mighty fortress…

…which was a heap of packed snow, only two feet high and lopsided on one side from an unfortunate earlier encounter with Toothless's tail.

"Awww man!" Hiccup moaned melodramatically as the two-year-old blond boy named Biffnick tugged at an arm. "Do I have to?"

"Yeah," replied the older freckle-faced girl as she pushed from behind. Try as she might to sound menacing in the part of the crafty villainess, the recently vacated gap in the front of her bright smile gave her a slight, endearing lisp. "We defeated you, daddy, and now we gedda put you in the Fortress of Doom! That's the rules."

"Ya, dassa wools, dadda!" the toddler chimed in.

Waddling after his sister like an overly stuffed goose, Biffnick was more fur and scarves and wrappings than child. Even so, as all parents tend to do, Hiccup worried for the hundredth time if he'd bundled his son up enough against the bitter cold of winter on Berk. The kid hadn't stopped squealing in delight since he'd set foot out the door, but the cherry redness of his cheeks and the not-so-subtle trickle of green coming from his nose told his father it was about time for them to go inside.

"Rules? Since when do snowball fights have rules?" Hiccup allowed himself to be tugged and shoved some more, offering just enough resistance to make them work for it. "I'm not sure I want to go anywhere with you two, especially if there are rules."

"Aww, daaad," whined the girl, circling around in front of him with her hands on her hips, thick auburn braids flying out to the sides. "You promised."

"You pwomise," echoed the brother.

Hiccup made a show of sighing and rolling his eyes. "Ok, ok, Brennegaard, you can drag me into your sinister fortress, but don't think for one minute I'm gonna go quietly." He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Toothless! Oh no, Toothless, help! I'm being hauled off to the dungeons by two stinky little trolls!"

Biffnick stopped, poking out his lower lip in a classic fake toddler pout. He probably would have crossed his arms as well, but they were currently too stiff and fat to do much more than bend inward a little.

"Hey! I not twoll!"

"Ohhh, you're not? Well, what I meant to say was 'help I'm being hauled off to the dungeons by two mud-covered mutton-munching piggies'!"

"Haha, eww!" Brennegaard gave him a whack in the arm, reminding him that before he knew it, she would pack just as much of a punch as her mother. After all, she already owned a battleaxe and was known to enjoy indiscriminately terrorizing all the kids her age and even a few much older.

Toothless, who had been excavating under the fresh snow on the hillside of the Great Hall, popped his head out of it like a large gopher from a burrow, ears twitching at the sound of his name. After a good shake, he charged to the rescue like an avalanche, tongue flapping in the wind as he left a trail of white devastation in his wake.

It was time for the finale. Time to lay it on thick and ham it up before going in to devour an actual, much anticipated, delicious-smelling hunk of meat that had been slow-roasting over the fire.

"Aha! You'll never take me now," Hiccup crowed. "Toothless'll save me!"

The two tiny Hooligans giggled as the Night Fury stopped short at the base of the hill, suddenly distracted by the unavoidable need to nip and paw at the icy crystals floating through the air.

"Oh, well you're a lot of help," the chief snorted. "Who's side are you on, anyway?"

The dragon burbled happily and sat back on his haunches, intent to watch the show now that his itch had been scratched.

Spurred by the appearance of an audience, Brennegaard unleashed her best evil cackle.

"Hahahaaa, your fateful dragon has betrayed you!"

"That's 'faithful', not 'fateful'," Hiccup corrected, holding back a chuckle.

"Oh. So…your faithful dragon has betrayed you! Ahaha!"

Hiccup climbed over the wall of the snowy structure (with a bit of unnecessary help on the hind end from Biffnick) and dropped to his back with an arm draped across his forehead.

"Nooooo, not Toothless! Not my best, most loyal friend in the entire world! It can't be true! How will I ever go on without him? Blehhhhh…" With that, he let his head flop to the side and lay still, tongue lolling out and eyelids drooping.

He heard the hesitant shuffling of two miniature pairs of boots on the packed snow, inching closer and closer until scrambling over the wall to join him.

"Dadda?" the littlest one queried, poking him square in the face. It was all Hiccup could do not to burst out laughing right then and there, but for his last surprise to be a success, he would have to keep still and play it deadpan.

"Oh, c'mon, dad," Brennegaard said, "you're just messin' around."

Hiccup's mouth twitched. This was getting harder and harder with every second…

"Hello? Daddy? Ok, you're creepin' me out."

 _3…2…1…_

Hiccup sprang sideways at them with a growl. "I'm a ghost and I'm gonna _eat_ you!"

Screeching loud enough to bring several neighbors to their windows, the two children scampered off toward the house with their father hot on their tails. As soon as they rounded the nearest side of the house, Hiccup made an impressive grab for his next tickle victim, only to be broadsided by something very large and very heavy, which brought him sprawling down to his stomach and prevented any further pursuit.

"Aaauuggh!" Hiccup wailed, scrunching his eyes shut. "Why do you have to _do_ that?!"

This was one of those uncomfortable and unfortunate times when Toothless seemed to have forgotten (or consciously ignored) the fact that he weighed much more than his human companion. It happened fairly often, sometimes resulting in slightly bruised ribs and momentary loss of consciousness depending on how he decided to go about the tackle that day.

"Ok, you can get off now."

Perched atop him like a giant, satisfied cat, the Night Fury crooned his familiar dragon-laugh.

"Ohohooo, I see how it is, you dirty traitor," the Viking wheezed. "I said get off. I think my lungs are good and crushed now, thank you."

Much to Hiccup's relief, Toothless kindly obliged, stepping aside. Before he could stand, however, the dragon rolled him over and began licking him up one side and down the other, making sure to thoroughly coat him in slimy, fishy dragon spit.

"Uggh! Blech! Ohhhh man that is seriously disgusting!" Hiccup pushed the dragon's snout away and sat up. After a useless attempt at wiping off a bit of the goop, he sighed and gave Toothless a scratch under the chin.

"Let's go round up the kids, huh, bud? It's getting dark and I'm starv—hey, where're you going?"

Toothless had caught some enticing whiff that only he could detect and reared upright with nostrils flaring and lips smacking before bolting off in the direction of the woods.

"Toothless?" Hiccup called, then shook his head. The Night Fury was certainly the most intelligent dragon on Berk, but he was still a dragon nonetheless and apparently the world was full of distractions too good to pass by today.

Shivering slightly, Hiccup tromped around to the back of the house, fully expecting to happen upon his children squeezing in their last few seconds of fun before he herded them inside. Instead, he discovered nothing but trampled snow. Upon further inspection, an incredibly obvious pair of child-sized tracks broke away from the flattened area and hurried behind a monstrous drift. His mouth turned up in a mischievous grin at the sounds of muffled laughter coming from behind it. Quickly and carefully, he moved forward, intending to launch a full scale snowball barrage on the two sneaky tricksters—

"OOMF!"

Someone shoved him hard from behind. There was barely enough time for him to let out a surprised yelp before he landed face-first in the deep, cold heap of snow.

"HAHAA!" came the newcomer's raucous laugh. "Holy beard of Thor, that was too perfect! How did you not even hear me coming? Pfffhahahaha!"

Spluttering and slightly dazed Hiccup fought his way to the surface to see his whole family, now including his wife, all doubled over in a fit of laughter in front of him

"Ha, good one. Reeeeally cute," he grunted, trying to sound unamused and conceal another grin at the same time. "I'm guessing you guys planned this?"

Astrid looked innocently skyward. "Well, I was on my way out to find you and I suddenly remembered that I haven't practiced my stealth ambush on anybody in a while…"

Hiccup stepped forward, circling one arm around her waist and pulling her close to him.

"M'lady, you of all people should know that by order of the Chief of Berk, you are free to ambush me whenever you want…but maybe hold the snowdrift next time."

Astrid's eyes narrowed and she poked him playfully in the chest. "Well then, _Chief_ , I wouldn't get too comfortable. There's a loophole for every rule and a long, long winter ahead."

Under the darkening sky, the two leaned in for the inevitable mushy kiss.

"Ewwww!" Brennegaard squealed, turning tail in a b-line for the back door with a confused Biffnick in tow.

"Works every time," Astrid mumbled, smiling as she pulled away.

Bringing the other hand out from behind his back, Hiccup offered an impish smirk of his own in return. He knew all too well the epic whitewashing this would undoubtedly bring upon him, but revenge would be oh so sweet for the two seconds it lasted.

"And so does this," he said, stuffing his handful of snow down the back of his wife's tunic.


End file.
